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  • The Lying Game

  • By: Ruth Ware
  • Narrated by: Imogen Church
  • Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (276 ratings)
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The Lying Game cover art

The Lying Game

By: Ruth Ware
Narrated by: Imogen Church
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Summary

How much can you trust your friends?

The text message is just three words: I need you.

Isa Leigh drops everything, packs up her baby daughter and heads straight to Salten, where she and her three best friends attended prestigious boarding school Salten House. Only Kate still lives in the area, at the crumbling Tide Mill she inherited when her disgraced art tutor father vanished when she was just 17.

Each of the women is running from something, from an act that has haunted them for many years but which they have tried their best to bury: in work, in alcohol, in family, faith and routine. At school together, the girls used to play a game - the lying game - in which they competed to tell the most outrageous stories to fool tourists. But for some, did the boundaries between fact and fantasy become too blurred? And how much can you trust one another?

©2017 Ruth Ware (P)2017 Random House Audiobooks

What listeners say about The Lying Game

Average customer ratings
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  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Good mystery, hate the protagonist.

The narrator is fine overall but beware some of her dodgy accents. She can be a bit wet.

Speaking of wet, the protagonist of this story is saltier and wetter than the marshes of her girlish youth.

I liked the story (although there is lots of repetition) and most of the characters (shout out to Fatima). However the writing is full of screed and goes on and on about nothing much in particular (long detailed paragraphs of banal instances that add nothing to the story) and is full of repetition. Could be edited down to a killer short story. Some of the twists and turns are quite interesting and i listened all the way through to the end to hear the payoff and was greeted to a wet fart of an ending. The writing style is full of repetition.

I thought the protagonist of this story was an awful selfish berk and I kept hoping and hoping she would have some personal growth moment but she doesn't and it is horribly frustrating. "I wanted to say this certain thing, but i couldn't" (repeat ad nauseam).

In the end my partner and I had a jolly good time listening and mocking the story, characters, and narrator, despite the repetition.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Yawn

not a bad story but so needlessly long winded.I loved her other 2 books which is why i bought this one.I loved the narrator though .

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Oh dear..

I absolutely loved Ruth Ware's first two books and was excited to read this one. Oh how I was disappointed. It was as if it had been written by another person. Dismal, drawn out, over described banality to the point of painfulness. I listened to 6 and a half hours before anything remotely exciting happened! I almost came up on a hundred occasions but kept going because I loved the previous books so much. I truly wished I hadn't bothered. Dull. Unbelievable. Predictable. Boring. The only reason I have given this book two stars is because of Imogen Church's amazing narration. She is wonderful. Shame the story wasn't.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Gave up

I managed to get a third of the way through and then gave up. For a supposed thriller, it moved at a glacial pace.

It was one of those novels where a character can't simply open a door - there has to be a detailed description of how the door handle felt in their hand, how it reminded them of other door handles, a detailed description of the door opening etc. Gets very tedious.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Ridiculous, tedious plot

Just awful. idiotic plot with gaping holes. Not one of the characters acts like an actual human person, but instead exist merely as a stereotype. What's worse is the characters don't even move the plot along, bur just seem the exist as some kind of background white noise. So many badly thoughout ideas; The central friendship is completely unbelievable given they knew each other for a few months and never saw each other again for 17 years; the big secret is both underwhelming and utterly stupid; the endless, endless descriptions of a screaming baby (whose existence seems to have nothing at all to do with the story) breastfeeding; an obnoxious narrator who has a perfectly happy relationship with a man she loves one minute and the next minute is proclaiming she never really loved him because of a badly cobbled together romantic foil from when she was 15; and a central game seemingly so important the book is named after it that is barely mentioned and has no relevance at all to the story. Avoid.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Takes a long time to get going

Overall enjoyed the book, could have been shorter, an awful lot of backstory and it doesn't really get going until the last hour or so. Liked the character developments throughout though.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Very bored after 7 chapters

To be honest I didn't like the book from the start, I give it seven chapters as I absolutely loved her first two books.
This was so long winded, I kept waiting for something to happen, but alas nothing did.
Huge let down but at least I was able to get a refund.
I probably should've read more reviews before I bought it but I went on the basis of her to previous book be really good. Not for me this one!

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

a page turner

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes i would, its an easy read but with a good story

What does Imogen Church bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

she is a great narrator and every character she does is recreated very well throughout.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

no

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Endlessly boring

11 hours that really could have been condensed into 1. Not one likeable character, plot seems far fetched and has large holes.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Ridiculous plot!

I loved Ruth Ware’s other books but this one is really disappointing, the plot is ridiculous and the main character is unbelievably selfish! Narration starts to get really irritating and the story would have been better told in 30 minutes…

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